WILLIAM DALEY

Vesica Explor ations

 Vesica Vesica II 2007

Unglazed stoneware
24.5” x 20” x 12.5”
Collection of Alfred and Rica Fenaughty
Photograph: John Carlano

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W I L L I A M DA L E Y
Vesica Explorations

List Gallery
Swarthmore College

September 4, 2009 — October 31, 2009

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 Lovers Vesica 2008

Two views
25.5” x 23.5” x 11.75”
Unglazed ground stoneware
Collection of Sara Jane Daley
Photograph: Amanda Williams

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The Spirit in the Form
I met William Daley the first year I started my job as
director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He led
a clay workshop in the first session of our season—in June
of 1989—and this was my introduction to a community of
makers. What better way for me to experience it than to
spend time with Bill, who exemplified the best attributes
of both community and making.
It was a rainy two weeks—I recall that there were only
two days when it didn’t rain and even then there were thick
clouds. But things were full of light in the clay studio.
Bill had created his own festival inside—having students
make hats out of newspaper, baking a whole fish encased
in clay in one of the kilns, and testing out paper airplane
long-flight techniques among other initiatives. At the same
time, he was teaching about the architecture of pots,
moving from one student to another, one-on-one, as they
built molds out of tar paper or as they created their vessels
in clay. These were large forms requiring some innovative
engineering, and Bill was working alongside his students as
they encountered difficulties—sealing cracks with vinegar,
temporarily holding the forms together with cloth straps
torn from old sheets—to bring them into existence.
At the same time the pots were being built, there was
something else going on: Bill was fostering a spirit of
creativity and making a home for the unexpected. The
studio had become a place with a sense of adventure, a
place where technique went on a journey into the unknown.
It’s the same journey Bill makes in his own studio.
When Bill Daley is creating his large architectural vessels
he is traveling back as far as human memory, to the first
hands that touched clay, the first makers who created the
space between the inner and outer walls of a vessel.
Today when we talk about function and use, we might think
too literally about what that means. It’s not just whether
you can drink or eat out of a pot, although those are
important uses and once tied to our very survival; we are
yearning also to be connected with the profound cycles of
our own lives—to keep track of our voyage into life and back
to earth. In his vessels, Bill creates a space for that kind of
contemplation.
He recalls that the earliest book to shape his thinking was
the Baltimore Catechism, which he had to memorize for
his first communion when he was seven. Its definition of a
sacrament as the “outward visible sign of an inner spiritual
grace.” While he has read many books since then, and been
influenced by his teachers, his family, and his students,
the path from that book to his pots is plain to see. He is
creating sacred space, with the most elemental of
materials, and making between the thin walls of the pot,
the inner and outer world, a space where we can move
through time differently.
You can sense the ancient time of ritual when you look at
one of his pots. The proportions and dimensions are for
him a cosmic geometry, and as the viewer I feel as if I am
standing on the edge of earthen and stone works in
Mesoamerica or in a European cathedral, as if I could walk
down the steps and edges of the vessel and enter into a
deeper place. The journey is into a place where we are held.
We are not falling into an abyss, but finding an order among
the stars.
While the ancient life of clay and makers informs his work,
he doesn’t replicate the past—he brings the past into the
present. Each work is another attempt to create ‘the
outward visible sign,’ mediating between a perfect place
and the world we live in.
Part of the work that Bill does in creating his vessels is his
drawing. I’ve never been to a meeting or any other event
outside the studio where he isn’t at work on a drawing—
revisiting geometry and creating new spaces made by the
intersections of other forms. These combinations take us
beyond the expected into a place of transformation.
Ultimately the pot is also transformed by fire, becoming
stone again. Its scale evokes both the awesome space of
a sacred building and the intimate touch of the human
hand, forming the edges just so. The pots remind us of how
we are connected to our past and to the earth and to our
own bodies.
Bill believes deeply in our responsibility to pass on to the
next generation what we know, and then let that generation
take us to new places. In that way, building the future is
much like making art, where skill, tradition, and spirit
encounter the unknown.
A few years ago I asked Bill to teach in a program for high
school students, an intensive three-day workshop at
Haystack, where teens work in six different craft media in
a retreat setting, removed from the distractions of bells
and school buses. They are in the studios day and night,
experiencing the slower time of making.
One evening he spoke with the students about the ‘thin
places’ in Irish mythology, those places where the dividing
line between this world and the next, between this world
and the divine, is thin, like a permeable membrane. While
at that moment he was speaking of Haystack, I think he
was also saying that any world of serious making is a thin
place, a place where we travel back and forth between the
inner and the outer worlds, and try to join them together
as best we can.
That space between our inner and outer worlds can be vast,
or it can be thin, thin as the wall of the pot that Bill Daley
is forming with his hands.
— Stuart Kestenbaum
Director, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
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 Vesica Explorations
As a maker of clay pots,
I am their tracer of cycles.
Drafting lines in moist clay,
to stone by fire,
become, my telling way
to mind wonder.
Classic Vesica Symbol
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The geometry of the Vesica is graphed by inscribing the
circumference of two equal circles through each other’s
center points to become a mutual inside/outside unity. It is
an ancient icon which informs the mystery of two as a new
one. Vesica explorations through clay pots are seminal stuff,
a kind of material culture for incubating thought.
Like clay pots, primal materials, for me, have personae; they
hold secrets, embed traditions and feed the boundaries that
nurture change. Consequently, material holds the inherent
structure of the possible becoming. In studio time, it is a kind
of morphology. A quickener of tacit cues which slows down
my head to allow the possibility of seeping time as I work,
tools at hand. I call it practice-the wonderings of if. If, as
add-venturing; if, as play, serendipity or chance; if, as the
alternatives of un-thought, maybe my intuitions: feelings that
morph my parts and pieces into holds. Holds that nudge more
pro-found possible for what I thought I was trying to do with
now and then or how and why.
If the power of if informs the possible becoming and these
inter-restings insist, I know I have realized something useful
to pursue and give material evidence to share. Then I enjoy
the rush of getting closer to offering a more telling Vesica
Vessel-one in which the duality of material and spirit whisper
the symmetry of wonder we share together. My thanks to all
who help draw the circumference of the center points and
assure the future of Possibility-Becoming.
William Daley
June 24 2009
Photograph: Kev Filmore
Appollonian Vesica 2003

Unglazed stoneware
29” x 21” x 24”
Collection of Daniel Jalboot and Jennifer Peterson
Photograph: Amanda Williams

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 Venture Z Vesica 2007

32" x 29" x 17"

Unglazed stoneware
Collection of William and Catherine Daley
Photograph: John Carlano

Guardian Vesica 2005

Unglazed stoneware
30.5” x 26” x 38.5”
Collection of Thomas Daley
Photograph: Amanda Williams

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 Vesica Vessel 2001

24” x 17” x 12”

Unglazed Stoneware
Collection of Marlin and Ginger Miller
Photograph: Amanda Williams

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Azoic Vesica 2008

32” x 27.5” x 14.5”

Unglazed Ground Stoneware
Collection of Alfred and Rica Fenaughty
Photograph: Amanda Williams

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 William Daley—an Appreciation

The List Gallery is proud to host William Daley, Vesica Explorations.

The exhibition features a selection of significant works Daley produced
after completing over 30 years on the faculty of The University of
the Arts, Philadelphia in 1990.

Bill Daley is internationally acclaimed for his visually complex

slab-built ceramic vessels. His architectonic forms explore varied
relationships between interior and exterior geometries. Synthesizing
ancient spiritual symbols and elements of sacred architecture,
especially the vesica form of overlapping circles, Daley’s vessels
are both iconic and inventive. They speak to the human need for what
is both specifically authentic and universal.

Viewers will note that one work, Turner's Court (1983), was produced
prior to 1990. This vessel was made in honor of ceramic artist Robert
Turner (1913–2005), Daley’s close friend and Swarthmore alumnus,
and is included as a tribute to Mr. Turner.

The exhibition also includes four ceramic tablets, Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John (1994). These tablets are commissioned studies
for the liturgical furniture at the Westminster Presbyterian Church
in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The images are derived from the
Gospel figures as depicted in The Book of Kells, (c. 800), the illumi-
nated Celtic manuscript, where the Apostles are depicted as the
perfect man, the oxen, the lion, and the eagle.

William Daley, Vesica Explorations and this accompanying catalog were

made possible through a grant from the William J. Cooper Foundation.
We also wish to acknowledge the generous support of Carol Lorber
‘63 and Bennett Lorber ‘64. This exhibition was also made possible
through the leadership of Syd Carpenter, Professor of Art and Chair,
Swarthmore College.

The extended Daley family provided invaluable support. We especially

appreciate the organizational expertise of Thomas Daley, Barbara
Daley Schwab, Charlotte Daley, and Sara Jane Daley ’10. We would
also thank the individuals who have generously lent their works for
public appreciation, as noted in this catalog.

— Andrea Packard
Director, List Gallery

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William Daley
Born in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York in 1925
E D U C AT I O N
1950 B.S., Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA
1952 M.A., Columbia University, Teachers College,
New York, NY
SELECTED TEACHING EXPERIENCE
1957-90 Professor, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
SELECTED HONORS
2007 Watershed Inaugural Legends Award,
Newcastle, ME
2004 James Renwick Alliance, Distinguished Educator
Award
2003 American Craft Council, Aileen Osborne Webb
Award for Consummate Craftsmanship
2002 Elected to the Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
1998 Regis Master Award, Northern Clay Center,
Minneapolis, MN
1994 Honorary Doctorate, University of the Arts,
Philadelphia, PA
1989 Distinguished University Professor, University of
the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
College Art Association, Distinguished Teaching
of Art Award
Honorary Doctorate, Maine College of Art,
Portland, ME
1988 American Craft Council Fellow
1983 National Council on Education for the Ceramic
Arts Honorary Member
1977 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2008 Architecture and Ceramics: Material, Structure,
Vision, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN
2006 International Architectural Ceramic Exhibition,
Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, Korea
Poetics of Clay an International Perspective,
Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA
2000 Defining Moments in Studio Ceramics, Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Pioneers and Terriers: Colenbrander, Ohr & USA
Clay Today, Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands
1998 Clay into Art: Contemporary Ceramics, Selections
from the Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, NY
1997-98 Regis Masters Series: The Exhibition,
Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, MN
1996 Influenced by Nature, Gallery at Hastings-on-
Hudson, NY
1994 Working in Other Dimensions: Objects and
Drawings II, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
William Daley, Ceramic Works and Drawings,
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Washington, D.C.
1993 William Daley, Ceramic Works and Drawings,
Levy Gallery for the Arts, Moore College of Art
and Design, Philadelphia, PA
1990 Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1986 Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, American Craft
Museum, New York, NY
Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1985 Braunstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Garth Clark Gallery, New York, NY
1983 Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1981 Exhibit A Gallery Chicago, IL
1980 Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1979 A Century of Ceramics in the United States
1878-1978, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
Braunstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1976 Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1974 Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1959 Pace Gallery, Boston, MA
1954 Young Americans, America House, New York, NY
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL
Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI
Clayarch Gimhae Museum, Gimhae, South Korea
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Minneapolis Arts Institute, Minneapolis, MN
Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, D.C.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
The Saint Louis Museum of Art, MO
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
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 Guardian Chamber 1998 Vesica Vesica II 2007
26" x 18" x 18" Collection of Alfred and
Collection of Barbara Daley and Rica Fenaughty
George Schwab Azoic Vesica 2008
Collection of Alfred and
Encompassed Vesica 1999 Rica Fenaughty
23” x 21” x15”
Collection of David and Lovers Vesica 2008
Ligia Slovic Collection of Sara Jane Daley
New Pot 2009
Vesica Vessel 2001 Collection of William and
24" x 17" x 12" Catherine Daley
Collection of Marlin and
Ginger Miller New Pot 2009
Collection of William and
Coupled Vesica 2001 Catherine Daley
27" x 21" x 22"
Collection of James and Matthew Tablet 1994
Susan Pagliaro 17" x 17" x 3"
Collection of Barbara and
Celtic Vesica 2002 George Schwab
22" x 22" x 34"
Collection of Stephen and Luke Tablet 1994
Charlotte Martin 17" x 17" x 3"
Collection of Charlotte Daley
Apollonian Vesica 2003
29" x 21" x 24" Mark Tablet 1994
Collection of Daniel Jalboot and 17" x 17" x 3"
Jennifer Peterson Collection of Samuel Crothers

Vesica Monday 2005 John Tablet 1994

29" x 21" x 22" 17" x 17" x 3"
Collection of Marlin and Collection of Thomas and
Ginger Miller Donna Daley

Guardian Vesica 2005

28" x 24" x 40"
Collection of Thomas Daley

Venture Z Vesica 2007

32" x 29" x 17"
Collection of William and
Catherine Daley
Design: Barbara Daey Schwab

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Coupled Vesica 2001

Stoneware unglazed
27" x 21" x 22"
Collection of James and Susan Pagliaro
Photograph: John Carlano

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 Turners’ Court 1989

Unglazed stoneware
30” x 28” x 12”
Collection of Thomas and Donna Daley
Photograph: Amanda Williams

Cover:
Guardian Chamber 1992

Unglazed Stoneware
26” x 18” 18”
Collection of Barbara Daley and George Schwab
Photograph: Amanda Williams